My wife and I moved to Australia about 2 years ago and I think it cost my company around $7000USD just to move the contents of our 2 bedroom apartment in Chicago. That didn't include our airline tickets or temporary accommodations once we arrived. It took about 10 weeks for our things to arrive in Sydney and then another 2 weeks for them clear customs and be transported to Melbourne where we were living. We were originally supposed to be located in Sydney, otherwise they could have been shipped directly to Melbourne and we would have had them a little sooner.

Obviously you won't be able to transport your car from the US because all cars here are right hand drive. Other things you will have to re-purchase when you arrive are anything electronic because Australia uses 240V power. You can purchase step-up transformers if you absolutely cant live without something you already have, but if you do make sure you buy one that is rated for the appropriate wattage of whatever you will be plugging into it. In addition, Australia uses PAL for all video encoding, so your NTSC television and VCR/DVD players will be of limited use here. Most of the televisions and VCRs you buy over here support NTSC playback so if you have a large video collection you will still be able to view them on equipment you purchase here. However Australia is in Region 4 for DVDs so you may have problems playing any Region 1 DVDs you may have purchased in the US. Of course if you do a little research you shouldnt have too much trouble finding a DVD player that will play all regions of DVDs. Hope that helps.

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